In bridge circuits, a combination of an IGBT (insulated gate bipolar transistor) and an antiparallel freewheeling diode is often not necessarily required. In many bridge circuits, e.g. in bridge circuits for driving switched reluctance motors (also referred to herein as SR motors), stepper motors or in lighting applications, a series circuit formed by a MOSFET (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor) or an IGBT with a diode proves to be completely sufficient for the function. In order to realize such a circuit, discrete IGBTs and diodes have been typically used, i.e. the circuit is constructed from a relatively high number of individual components. This leads to increased costs, in particular in the case of driving systems for motors having a high number of poles and correspondingly a large number of required chopper circuits, since additional assembly work becomes necessary for each component.